January 26, 2024
The International Court of Justice today ruled in favor of the South African APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS against Israel.
Pepe Escobar delivers the first summary of the verbal order (the written one will follow later):
Highlights:"The military operation conducted by Israel in Gaza has resulted in untold death and injuries, destroyed substantial infrastructure and housing units, caused mass malnutrition, collapsed the healthcare system, and displaced the majority of its inhabitants. This war has affected the entire population of Gaza and will have far lasting consequences. The court has taken note of the language of dehumanization by senior Israeli government officials."
The ICJ accepts the South African demand for urgent provisional measures to be taken for the protection of Palestinians in Gaza against Israel and RECOMMENDS (caps mine) the following:
Israel must take all measures to prevent genocidal actions; Israel must ensure that its military forces do not commit genocidal actions; Israel must punish incitement to genocide; Israel must provide access to essential aid; Israel must preserve evidence of its actions; Israel must provide a report of its actions.
The ICJ decision is BINDING.
Yet even as the ICJ decides that Israel must take all measures to prevent death and injury, and provide the full scope of humanitarian needs to Palestinians (includes access to food, medicine, infrastructure, etc), what happens if Tel Aviv simply ignores the decision?
Israel must file a report on the remedial actions within one month of the ruling. All bets are off on wether biblical psychopathology practitioners will comply.
By accepting the application and by ordering Israel do cease and desist from certain practices the Court seems to state that Israel has actually committing acts of genocide.
As Heidi Matthew, an assistant professor of law at Harvard remarks:
The ICJ's written order and separate opinions will be released shortly. But my first reaction is that this is a big win for Palestinian advocates. Some will be disappointed that the Court stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. But...
... the fact that the Court ordered the measures it DID, including directing Israel not to commit or incite genocide, indicates it has concluded that it is (a) plausible for Palestinians in Gaza to claim protection from genocide, and (b) that the need for protection is urgent.
I think we can infer from this that *at a minimum* there is a serious risk that Israel will commit genocide. This is important because it puts *all states* on formal notice of the serious risk of genocide, which triggers states’ duty to take concrete steps to prevent genocide.
Among other things, this means that in order for states to fulfill their international obligations under the Genocide Convention they must *do something*. For e.g., states exporting arms or military technology to Israel must stop.
The short story: this order on provisional measures will have an important and immediate impact on how states are required to act under international law. It will also radically shift the global conversation about what is happening in Gaza.
Another related point: I need to read the separate opinions, but my intuition is that it's a massive win that Israeli ad hoc judge Barak sided with the majority in ordering many of the provisional measures. He may have judged his own legacy as more important than Netanyahu's.
This is small win for Gaza and a big one for humanity.
(I plan to come back to this as soon as I have read the written argumentation and order.)
Posted by b on January 26, 2024 at 13:29 UTC | Permalink